About this dataset

Land surface temperature is how hot the ground feels to the touch. If you want to know whether temperatures at some place at a specific time of year are unusually warm or cold, you need to compare them to the average temperatures for that place over many years. These maps show the average weekly or monthly daytime land surface temperatures for 2001-2010.

December 2001

What do the colors mean?

The colors on these maps represent temperature patterns of
the top millimeter (or “skin”) of the land surface — including bare land, snow or ice cover, urban areas, and cropland or forest canopy — as observed by MODIS in clear-sky conditions for the time period indicated. Yellow shows the warmest temperatures (up to 45°C) and light blue shows the coldest temperatures (down to -25°C). Black means “no data.”